Edward Heath may have been one of the most unsuccessful prime ministers in British history, having presided during his four-year term (1970–1974) over shortages, power cuts, a three-day week and hyperinflation, with nothing much to boast about except getting Britain into the European Common Market (admittedly an historic achievement); but this did not prevent him being a power-crazed egotist of astonishing conceit. He may have been of modest social origins, the son of a maid and of a builder in Broadstairs, Kent, but he was convinced nevertheless of his own superiority to practically everybody and of his pre-ordained destiny to be an unchallenged leader. It was indicative of his character that he was an admirer of such tyrants as Fidel Castro, Marshal Tito, and Mao Tse Tung, the last of whom flattered him in return with a gift of two infertile pandas during a visit he paid to Beijing in the last year of his premiership.
In 1976, a couple of years after losing the 1974 election on the issue ‘Who governs Britain?’, at which the people decided it should be almost anyone but him, Heath published a book called Music: A Joy for Life which I reviewed in this magazine at the time.
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